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Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien is amongst the musicians from the Featured Artists Coalition to sign up to new guidelines on illegal downloading.

The Featured Artists Coalition was founded earlier this year in order to provide a focus for the views of musicians within the music industry. In a series of meetings some of the biggest bands in the country have debated the future of music.

However recently the group's stance on file sharing has come under attack from Lily Allen. The pop pixie published a new blog in which she claimed a softly-softly stance was harming emerging talent.

In a new meeting today (September 25th) the FAC debated their stance on file sharing, taking the unusual step of releasing proposals for a 'three strike rule' for illegal downloaders.

In a statement on their official website the Featured Artists Coalition outlined their ideas:

"Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional."

The meeting also resulted in an expression of solidarity with Lily Allen, who has come under fire for her stance on file sharing. "We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days" they stated.

Amongst those who signed the new guidelines were members of Radiohead, Blur, Keane, Billy Bragg, Tjinder Singh of Cornershop and many more.